This is the 33rd article in the Spotlight on IT series. If you'd be interested in writing an article on the subject of backup, security, storage, virtualization or MSPs for the series, PM Kathryn to get started.

Before you jump in whole hog to implement VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) I would suggest you take the time to go through your current environment and see if making the switch makes sense. This has been a buzzword for the past couple of years, but I don't think it's the end-all, be-all solution some providers would have you think it is, at least not for everyone.

We have a nice VDI implementation where I work now with 5 physical Citrix presentation servers running Windows 2008 and all the assorted support hardware to make that work. With our environment, it made much more sense to implement VDI since we have a majority of users who are onsite and don’t leave the office, and those who are mobile have web access when not in the office. When we looked at the expense of rolling out new towers / laptops and the associated upkeep costs, we determined it would make much more sense (from a financial point of view) to roll out thin clients and terminal servers running under Citrix. We support roughly 100 end users with them, and with the Citrix setup, they handle the load balancing quite nicely. You'll notice that you will have more control over your environment with VDI, patching is much easier, and overall I think it's reduced our headaches and our costs.

With VDI you can use regular computers which log in to your hosted environment, or you can roll out thin clients. We have both here (most of the secretaries and functionaries use a thin client, and the lawyers get a laptop or tower). One of the big benefits of the thin clients is that we don't care about them getting viruses, the end users can't really download much of anything to the thin clients (no local storage space), and it really forces the people to do everything "in the cloud" where we can make sure it's backed up and that our AV solution is kept current and active. With Terminal servers, in order for most viruses to take hold, the server would need to be in “install” mode. We rarely enable that, and only in extreme off hours to further reduce our exposure. Like anywhere else, you'll still need to keep an eye on how much data people are storing in their directories, but with roaming profiles enabled and a home directory defined on the file server, we don't have issues with huge logon times. The first time someone logs into a given server it will download their profile information, but after that it goes much quicker (just checks to see what's changed from the last time they logged in).

With the thin clients running off flash memory, it's a matter of a minute or two after powering them on until someone can be "useful" and working. One of the major benefits (in my mind) is that since they're working on the servers to start with, should there be a connectivity issue or a network outage (when working from home) we don't normally lose any data. Their data is hosted on the file server and is being backed up as part of our normal backup set, and if their laptop craps out or their thin client fries itself we can simply swap out their hardware and they're back up and working in ~15 minutes (most of which is taken up by my trudging up and down the stairs to their office and swapping out cables). We have had issues in the past with the servers locking up, but with time and a sense of finding obscure hotfixes from Microsoft we've resolved those open file issues and the systems have been rock solid ever since.

As we've upgraded some of the lawyers to newer laptops, we've rolled out the old ones (after a complete refresh) to those users who needed the ability to do things a thin client doesn’t allow. If you've got older towers & laptops, there's even a way to load a thin-client like OS (or even Linux of some flavor) to further reduce your risk of exposure to viruses and people seeing how much time they can waste on Facebook.

If you've just dumped a boatload of money on new systems for your users, rolling out VDI probably wouldn't make financial sense for you. If you're looking at upgrading a large chunk of your end users hardware (laptops / towers), then maybe it'd be smarter to invest in some new servers, install the VDI software and see how it runs before upgrading everyone with new towers / laptops. We've seen the occasional glitch (when someone's running a detailed search it slows down everyone else's session on that server) but it's usually short lived and we get very few complaints from our end users now that they understand how the system operates.

All in all, our setup works extremely well for us, but you (as the onsite IT professional) would need to weigh the pros and cons of whether implementing a virtual desktop infrastructure makes sense for you and your organization. If you’ve got a lot of people who are extremely mobile and cannot easily access the web when out of the office, it may not be an ideal solution. But if you have end users with a relatively stable ability to access to the internet, then running with VDI may be a good fit for you.

90 Replies

I agree with many of your points. I went with the Panologic solution to keep the cost of the installation down myself, but there are many different flavors of VDI depending on what you are looking for.

1st Post

5 servers for 100 users seems very high from what I've read, but I'm curious to hear people's experiences. I found a VMWare View article from 2010 that said 8 users per core was very conservative and you could likely get significantly more than that with newer processors. I'm considering an implementation for a K-12 charter school that will have about 600 concurrent users and am wondering how many servers I would need to purchase.

Thanks for the post. I am currently considering rolling out a limited test of VDI in our evironment. We have the need for desktops to be available for a remote office in a DR scenario, and figured we would use this as an opportunity.

Do you have anymore information on the Windows patches that you used for the issues you were having?

The most overlooked part of ROI is the renewal of licensing cost over-time.

Dell has several 'turn-key' virtualization hardware solutions as most vendors are offering this approach for smaller outfits.

As with any solution, I am a big believer in TRY before you BUY. Once you purchase it, you own it lock, stock and barrel.

We have vSphere 5 now and some 'Windows' machines have been virtualized and from a updating perspective it is easier. Plus the boot time is faster and you can do snap-shots and so on.

With any solution it has to be redundant and/or some type of disaster plan in place. Sometimes this can run into more money than actually physical machines.

Lastly, on any 'big' purchase I would get at least a 3 year contract on the software licenses so you do not have the reoccuring licenses for example on VMware. Plus the pricing is generally better as well.

Dell has a new vStart line, it is worth checking this out it would be geared towards this.

I looked at it, but is there really a cost savings? Doesn't Windows server have to be datacenter that costs a fortune, the $5k for a decent commodity server, Virtual host software, then the thin client? Last I checked thin client cost as much as the new Acer i5's I bought with 4 gb of ram (around $500). Then there are connection broker software and remote licensing with a few vendors I looked into (Parallels and someone else I forget).

It would be nice but the few times I tried to get people to use temrinal server when the VPN did not work well with their app and central storage there were issues with drive maps, and some programs getting installed correctly. These programs often have issues installing correctly on the second user to log into a specified computer anyways because the 3rd party updates so often.

I would love to give it a second look, even if just for a temporary swap while I re-image a down tower.

I would like to also point out that VDI is a great step towards Business Continuity All the desktops are the same. Licensing for Citrix/VMware desktops are heavy plus the cost of load balancing or RDP gateways hardware.

1st Post

Nice post. I agree with someone that mentioned that you have overcapacity which in turn increases the deployment, management cost and complexity as well. In my opinion, couple of standard 2U 8or16 way server servers (with good load balancing you mentioned, right on!) should be able to support your environment comfortably. I also think that the complexity of VDI is driven higher mostly by some VARs and in all honesty, it doesn't have to be this complex.

For most companies, a complete hosted VDI model might also provide much better ROI and TCO. In my personal opinion, you shouldn't have to pay more than $60 per desktop per month for a fully managed hosted solution and be worry free.

We are using a solution from NCOMPUTING here. We have roughly 15 people using it as we are still in the testing phase. Our Admissions office has been extremely happy with the devices since they generally have no trouble.

If you use something like that + VMware, then you don't have all of the extra broker licenses and all of that. It basically uses RDP, and when you are using their thin client, you get some extra speed boosts with their software. The devices are generally around $250 for the ones we get.

We are looking at expanding our deployment as well. We have already seen an ROI on our purchase since we already had a VMware infrastructure and now we don't have to purchase $700 desktops for them.

1st Post

While the article may make it seam like a good idea it's not vmware's VDI is no good using the standard Citrix with all the terminal servers again no good. Desktop machine are cheap and I don't know where you get these thin clients from but I always find them more expensive than an average desktop top, put on top of that any user that needs more than one monitors ( I work with finance company's,they like there monitors).

I have looked at all solution and have found the only thing that truly makes séance and can scale is.

What did you do for a Test/P.O.C? We would like to get into the VDI, but are not sure how to really get a good test. I thought about giving it to our IT department, but it is the non-technical people that I want to make sure they would be comfortable with it. Also, we have a lot of YouTubers here. (That is to say they want to watch YouTube) How do some of the video/audio streaming work for you?

We overbuilt due to some of our accounting folks and the reports they run, plus in the summer we get clerks in (which also adds to the workload)

Phil3930 wrote:

I looked at it, but is there really a cost savings? Doesn't Windows server have to be Datacenter that costs a fortune, the $5k for a decent commodity server, Virtual host software, then the thin client? Last I checked thin client cost as much as the new Acer i5's I bought with 4 gb of ram (around $500). Then there are connection broker software and remote licensing with a few vendors I looked into (Parallels and someone else I forget).

We're running Win 2008 standard edition servers. As for our thin clients, yes, they were not cheap (HP now, started with Wyse) but since they need virtually no upkeep and have no issues we've been happier with them than our full-blown towers / laptops. I really like the no fans / disks (they use flash memory) - it's weird having a system running next to you with no noise at all.

As I mentioned, VDI is not for everyone. It works well for us and we'll likely stick with it for quite a while.

We picked a department that has a few users who aren't really power users -- they just use the basic office apps (Outbreak -- I mean Outlook, Office) and don't really do a lot of PowerUser type stuff (watching a lot of videos, et al).

We started out actually with a test of 3 folks. They liked it, so we expanded from there.

1) when considering virtualizing the client, first understand 'why' your business might want to. Is it regulatory compliance you need? Is it reduced mgmt costs/overhead? Does you business need to be more agile? Do you plan to need to scale up or down quickly? Are there high impact risks to data loss or theft?

Net/Net - know why first.

2) VDI (virtual desktop) is just one way to solve some of these issues. Explore all of the other technologies. Understand the costs and risks of each and how they impact your business 12-18 months out before you jump on the VDI bandwagon.

I have ran the numbers for my company a few times, and there is no way VDI is cheaper for 100 users. I have quotes in front of me now showing the difference. Unless you are buying $1000 towers for everyone (which we don't).

I have a project that needs 60 workstations. To do basic workstations, my cost is about $750 per workstation. For VDI, it will run me over $1000 per workstation. I understand VDI has some administrative advantages, but not to that extreme. The other problem is I have to pay $100 each year for every computer to run Windows 7. The Microsoft tax is just killing the cost of VDI IMO.

Good article, but I have to disagree with the financial advantages for the average company.

Great article, but not exactly what I think of when I think of or hear VDI.

Do you consider using Citrix on a Terminal server (Windows 2008 R2 server) the same as using Windows 7 on ESXi or Hyper-V? I'm pretty sure that Citrix now also has a way to virtualize Windows client OS's into the datacenter.

I understand VDI has some administrative advantages, but not to that extreme.

When you can drop 1 support person in your organization, and your time to resolution on help desk tickets gets cut in half I'd argue its a bargain. When "I did something and now it no workey" can always be responded to with "log out, login, get a new desktop" its impressive.

I saw that Citrix picked up an easy turnkey vdi solution when they acquired VDI-in-a-box. Anyone try that?

VDI looks good on paper, but when you add up license costs and thin client costs, it doesn't look so good for smaller offices. I wouldn't think VDI would be worthwhile for running anything less than 30 desktops per server. And in that case, those desktops probably won't be able to do any heavy computing, or complicated graphics. Being that the majority of the 75 desktops in my office are engineers running CAD, or doing 3D Rendering, or Finite Element Analysis, I think I can safely rule VDI out as an effective solution for my office anytime in the near future.

I saw that Citrix picked up an easy turnkey vdi solution when they acquired VDI-in-a-box. Anyone try that?

VDI looks good on paper, but when you add up license costs and thin client costs, it doesn't look so good for smaller offices. I wouldn't think VDI would be worthwhile for running anything less than 30 desktops per server. And in that case, those desktops probably won't be able to do any heavy computing, or complicated graphics. Being that the majority of the 75 desktops in my office are engineers running CAD, or doing 3D Rendering, or Finite Element Analysis, I think I can safely rule VDI out as an effective solution for my office anytime in the near future.

That is a difficult use case. There would have to be some other reason to implement VDI, i.e. remote access to desktops to drive it. Even then...

I have checked out VDI-In-A-Box. Spinning up new desktops took a long time. You'd have to throw a lot of hardware at it. Dedicated VMs would help with that though.